


Merry Catmas

by Feroxai



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Catboy Felix, Christmas Fluff, Crack Treated Seriously, Established Relationship, Haunted House, M/M, Mystery Inc Shenanigans, faerghus four, supernatural powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:28:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27856795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feroxai/pseuds/Feroxai
Summary: Faerghus Inc have been contracted to take care of a mysterious haunted house. What's this?? Felix has been cursed? The house is infested with more than twenty ghosts??? The ghosts are obsessed with Christmas? Wowee!Or: Sylvain and Felix smooch to save Christmas, prove the power of love, and dismantle the catboy institution.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 30
Kudos: 79
Collections: Sylvix Advent Calendar





	Merry Catmas

“Are you sure this is the place?” asks Dimitri.

Sylvain looks at the grand house and its immediate surroundings, which are absolutely smothered in snow. It came up to their knees. He’s going to have to use his powers to melt a path through to the door. A snowstorm has enveloped the site, complete with an ominous grey cloud above the house. The rest of the estate is conspicuously snow-less. 

“If this isn’t a haunted house, then I’d hate to see what is,” Felix says.

Sylvain raises his hands and gets to work melting a path to the snow and the others line up behind him. He looks to Ingrid. “So what’s the deal with this place?”

“I briefed you in the car!” says Ingrid.

“He was napping the whole time,” Felix said. “Idiot stayed up late to submit his thesis proposal.” 

She shakes her head, but her expression’s fond. “The client’s great aunt died last year and left her this estate. She wants to cleanse it so she can use this house as a community centre. It’s heritage-listed.”

“She sounds nice,” Sylvain says as they arrive at the front of the house. It’s a bit eerie, mostly because of the strange howling of the wind and snow around them. If he looks carefully through the windows, he can see glimpses of ghostly blue reflected in the glass.

“Felix, do your thing,” says Dimitri.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Felix says, but he centres himself so he can use his powers. He closes his eyes and tilts his head—blue energy seeps out from him, like little feelers. It envelops the house. Eventually, he opens his eyes, and they disappear. “There’s more than 25 ghosts in there. Their presence isn’t that strong. Shouldn’t be a problem for us. The others don’t have to come up to help.”

After getting that go-ahead, Sylvain opens the door. The hallway is vast and empty, but it’s lined with doors to other rooms, and there’s a staircase in the middle.

“We probably shouldn’t let our guard down,” says Sylvain. “A lot of ghosts is never a good thing.”

Felix rushes up to him and pulls him back. With his left hand on Sylvain's shoulder, he stares straight ahead and points with his right—on the top of the staircase is the ghost of an older lady. The longer Felix leaves his hand on Sylvain, the clearer her features become. She looks sweet and kindly, not like a malicious ghost at all. Still, appearances can be deceiving, as they’ve learnt over the years. 

She gradually disappears, even as Felix keeps his hand on Sylvain’s shoulder.

“Tch. She’s gone.”

“What was it?” Ingrid asks.

“An older lady ghost. She looked sad,” said Sylvain. “Any idea who it could be?”

“Might be the client’s great aunt. But I don’t see why she’d haunt the place. She was apparently a very kind philanthropist,” says Ingrid.

“There’s always more to people than meets the eye,” Felix says darkly.

“Well, she’s just one ghost. We should see what else is in this house,” says Sylvain. He walks forward. “Which room do you guys want to check out first? Bathrooms are usually promising, and this place probably has four of those.”

“Who died and made you the leader? Let’s go to the kitchen,” says Felix. Sylvain shakes his head, fondly and takes his boyfriend's hand. Felix grumbles a bit but goes with the motion.

“Alright, kitchen it is. Uh, Ingrid, you have the floorplan for the house, right?”

* * *

They make it to the kitchen relatively unscathed. They make it to the kitchen _too_ unscathed. There’s not a ghost in sight.

“Are you sure you sensed more than 20 ghosts in this house?” Sylvain asks.

Felix glares at him. “Are you doubting my abilities?”

“No, it’s just that there doesn’t seem to be anything _here_.”

At that moment, the universe decided to prove him wrong. 

A jar on the counter topples and crashes onto the floor—a ghostly cat jumps out from the ceramic remains and runs through Felix, becoming a blob after it passes through him as if Felix was some sort of spiritual filter. 

Ingrid lets out a scream of shock and terror.

On the top of Felix’s head are a pair of cat ears, and behind him is an unsettling supernatural tail to match.

Felix clutches at his hair and at his new appendages. “What the _fuck?_ What did it do to me? _”_

Sylvain gathers him up in his arms, putting himself between Felix and the ghostly blob. He lights up his hand with fire— his exorcism powers aren’t strong when he’s not working with Ingrid or Dimitri, but he should be able to keep that _thing_ away from Felix.

“Uh, guys,” says Dimitri, with a great deal of uneasiness. 

Sylvain tears his eyes away from the blob and looks at Dimitri, who is standing in front of the door they came in from—ghostly blobs appear from the door, branching out and circling them. 

So many misty shapes dot the kitchen—on the cabinets, tables and the floor. Several float in the air, like the ominous lure of an angelfish. A few of them are slowly approaching Felix’s increasingly tense form. Sylvain feels the alarm rise up his throat. 

The door behind them slams shut.

Sylvain looks at them and says, “Run.”

* * *

They run into the next corridor through the door in front of them. The ghosts were relentless—Dimitri pried open doors with his strength, and Ingrid slammed them shut behind them with her telepathy. 

Then they reach a dead end. 

“What are we going to do?” asks Dimitri. 

Sylvain looks at the window at the end of the hall. “We’re only on the second floor. If we break the window, we can make it out.” 

Ingrid tugs him back. “No property damage. Do you know how much it’ll cost to replace a window in a heritage-listed building?”

“It’s not like we have any other choice. Those ghosts know the house inside and out. No matter how we run, they’ll find us.”

“Leaving this house would be like giving up. Sure, there’s a lot of ghosts, but we shouldn’t have problems exorcising them. They don’t seem too strong,” she retorts.

“Not too strong? Look at what they’ve done to me,” Felix growls. Sylvain looks at what they've done to Felix. It's horrifying, but the ears and tails is kind of cute.

“We can try again another day after we figure out what they’ve done to Felix. We don’t know the strength of the enemy and they definitely have the numbers advantage.”

Sylvain walks towards the window, heating up his fists to melt the glass. But a ghostly mist appears right in front of him, making him yelp and take a step back. The mist spreads from that point, and the same dreary atmosphere from before grows again. 

The others look uneasily at each other, and they move closer to each other and way front the mist until they’ve been herded into the centre of the corridor.

“Um, guys, I think we’re surrounded,” says Dimitri.

“Wow, I couldn’t tell,” says Felix. 

Sylvain steps closer to his friends and ignites his hand, ready to fight in case the ghosts attack.

“Put that out!” shouts Ingrid. “If we damage the property, we’re going to have to pay for it. This corridor is too narrow for fighting. You’ll hurt yourself.”

The ghosts solidify a bit more; the mists of their bodies morphed into cat-like creatures, much like the one that ran through Felix earlier. 

A particularly cute calico cat trots forward in front of them slowly and mews. 

“It’s so cute. Do we have to exorcise it?” asks Dimitri. 

“That’s what the client wants,” says Ingrid. “You know they can’t repurpose this house if it’s haunted.

“Wait.” Felix steps forward, between the ghost and his friends. 

The ghost sat on the ground and meowed. Felix frowns as he listens, and then sighs. “It says it isn’t a bad ghost. It’s just trying to fulfil its owner’s dream to move on.”

“I thought you couldn’t talk to spirits,” says Dimitri, confused.

“I can’t.”

“But you’re talking to them right now,” says Dimitri, with an increasing degree of confusion.

Felix’s face does a weird twitchy thing. “I’m speaking ‘cat’. I think the curse did...something.”

As if sensing that Felix was ignoring it, the cat meows again and moves closer to him. Felix gets on his knees. “Go on.”

The cat chatters a bit more. 

“They said they’re trapped because their master doesn’t want to move on.”

“We will have to exorcise their master then?” asks Ingrid.

The cats meow faster and louder, like an absurd choir. 

“We’re not doing that,” Felix says firmly, almost like he was reassuring the cats. “She’s not a malicious ghost. She’s waiting for something.”

He turns to the cats. “What is she waiting for?”

The cat at his feet meows quietly.

Felix’s expression softens. “I see.”

“Well, what did they say?” Ingrid asks, impatient.

“The owner of the house was an old lady. Her wife died in an accident last year, right before Christmas. She had a medical attack after she found out. They couldn’t get her help fast enough. It seems like her wife has passed on, but she’s still here. Waiting for their last Christmas together.”

“Oh,” Dimitri says. “That’s terrible.”

Felix stares resolutely at the ground. His tail seems agitated, and swings between his legs.

Sylvain steps forward and places a hand on his shoulder. “Felix, what do you want us to do?”

“I don’t want to exorcise her. The ghosts haven’t been trying to hurt anyone, they’ve just been foolishly trying to get the attention of the psychics that were sent here. But none of them were strong enough to understand them.”

“Alright,” Sylvain says, consoling him. “What do we need to help her move on?”

He looks towards them with resolution in his eyes. “A perfect Christmas”. 

* * *

The cats lead them downstairs, floating and bopping in the air, moving their limbs as if they were swimming. They disappear between two large doors, terribly ornate and heavy-looking.

Sylvain steps aside for Dimitri. “After you, Dima.”

Dimitri shakes his head with a smile and pushes the doors open.

They step into a large, empty ballroom.

“This is the room they want to set-up up the Christmas things in,” says Felix.

“Wow,” says Ingrid. “Imagine the events they can run in here.” 

Sylvain wrinkles his nose. He’s never liked large, formal public functions. But it would be nice to run casual community events in a space like this. He can understand why the client wants to use this house instead of neglecting it. 

The cats let out a whole string of meows, grabbing their attention.

“Okay, I get it,” snaps Felix. He turns to them. “They want a Christmas tree,” he says. A cat trots up to his feet and continues to meow. He sighs. “They _insist_ on a Christmas tree.”

“There’s a supermarket in town,” says Dimitri. “They’ll surely have trees.”

Sylvain looks out of the window in doubt. The snow had piled all the way to the window, and they hadn't bought snow chains for the car.

"We're snowed in. There's no way we can go to Walmart to get a tree," says Ingrid.

Dimitri's enthusiasm fades. "I suppose you're right. But how are we going to get to stage the perfect Christmas for Ghost Granny if we don't have a tree?"

"Why do we need a plastic tree? There's literally a forest next door," points out Sylvain.

"We can use the silver axe in the car," says Felix. The ghostly cat ears on his head perk up. Sylvain's not sure what's cuter; his boyfriend's Catty Christmas Curse, or his strange insistence on using sharp weapons at every flimsy opportunity. 

"Felix," Ingrid says, exasperated. "That thing is for killing zombies."

"There is literally no reason it can't work on trees," Felix replies. He's pouting now and his ears are a little less perky. Adorable.

Sylvain jerks a thumb at Dimitri. “No tree can survive Dimitri with an axe. I’ll melt a path out to the car, and light the way to the forest. There’s gotta be a small-ish tree we can fit through the door,” he says, and then waggles his fingers. “Ingrid can float it back.”

“Why does Dimitri get to use the axe?” Felix grumbles.

“Babe,” Sylvain says brightly. “It’s a silver axe. You’re cursed. If you hold that thing right now, it’s going to burn, and I’m not healing that.”

“Some boyfriend you turned out to be,” Felix hisses, ears flat against his head. Sylvain’s fingers twitch by his side. Those ears are so cute! But touching them is probably not worth running Felix’s relatively amiable mood.

He strings an arm around Felix’s shoulders instead. “If we lift the curse, I promise I’ll indulge whatever deforestation urges you have,” Sylvain says softly into Felix’s ear.

Felix’s cheeks flush a little pink, but he doesn’t shake Sylvain’s arm off. Sylvain jolts a little as he feels Felix’s ghost tail lays along his leg.

“Pay up, that’s one for the flirt jar. You guys are giving me lactose intolerance,” says Ingrid. Sylvain sighs and venmos her $5 to the flirt/sylvix anniversary budget jar.

“Does that mean we’re going with my plan?”

She sighs. “It’s not like we have a choice. Lead the way, Flamehead.” 

* * *

“This tree looks good,” says Ingrid. She had picked out a nice small tree, about 1 metre in height. 

“It’s a bit too small. It doesn’t really scream ‘perfect Christmas’ to me,” says Sylvain.

“Are you the one carrying it back or am I?”

“I’m just saying, if my ghost was lingering and waiting for the perfect Christmas tree to show me the meaning of life and death, it would have to be bigger than that.”

“Fine. Which of these trees would you pick then?”

“That one,” he says, pointing to a particularly sparkly tree which was a bit taller than Dimitri. “It’s almost as handsome as I am.”

Felix tilts his head and gives the tree a slow once over. “It’s a nice tree, but it doesn’t look as nice as you,” he says matter-of-factly. 

“Flirt jar!” says Ingrid. Felix scowls and pulls out his phone.

“At this rate, your anniversary budget is going to be enough to buy a car,” says Dimitri.

Felix shakes his head. “Don’t give him any ideas. Just chop the tree down.” 

Dimitri gets to work, using his super strength to deflower the tree. Ingrid catches it with her powers before it manages to hit the snow. It floats daintily before them.

She turns to them. “Alright, we have the tree. What else can we do to spruce up this place?”

As if sensing that part one of their quest was completed, the cats begin bounding towards them through the snow. One snuggles up to Dimitri, who shivers but enthusiastically gives it a scratch.

Felix watches the cats chatter. “They said there’s some stuff in the attic that might help.”

“I’ve got some gingerbread cookies in the car that I’m willing to sacrifice to the cause,” says Ingrid, mournfully. “We can use the container lid as a plate.”

“We’ll split up then. Sylvain and I will go to the attic. You and Dimitri can get to the cookies. We’ll meet in the ballroom,” says Felix resolutely. It would be almost inspiring, if the ghosts at his feet weren’t wrestling each other.

“Just don’t make out in the attic and lose track of the time,” says Ingrid. 

* * *

Sylvain _wishes_ they’d make out, but the cat ears seemed to repel Felix from him like nothing else. 

If Sylvain didn’t know better, he’d say Felix was embarrassed, but honestly, sometimes it felt like Felix had even less shame than him, with all of the blunt and honest things that made their way out of his mouth. 

“What are you staring at?” Felix asks, annoyed once he realised that Sylvain had stopped sifting through the dusty attic boxes to stare at his ears.

“The, uh. Y’know,” Sylvain mumbles.

“Don’t. These are embarrassing. And unseemly. I look ridiculous” 

“You don’t look ridiculous, and even if you did, I wouldn’t care. What you look like doesn’t matter to me,” said Sylvain.

“Oh? That’s not what you said about my hair, or my eyes, or my ass—”

“I like those parts of you because you’re you. I think you’re hot no matter what. Grow out a warty witch’s nose for all I care. It’ll still be attached to you.”

“Save it,” growled Felix, but Sylvain could sense the hesitation in his rebuffal. He knew Felix, inside and out. Felix _wanted_ to believe him. 

“I mean it,” said Sylvain softly. “Even if you don’t believe me, all things considered, the cat ears are kind of cute.”

“That’s not helping,” said Felix.

“Alright,” said Sylvain, almost solemnly. He leaned down and rested his forehead against Felix’s. “I won’t bring that up again.”

He goes back to sifting through the boxes but notices that Felix has stopped. He shuffles over to him. “What’s up, babe?”

Felix grins. “I found the perfect sweater for you,” he says evilly. 

Sylvain looks down and sees Felix holding the most atrocious red-and-green sweater. It has white pom poms lined down the middle. Felix wants him to change into _that_? He feels insulted on behalf of his emerald green cashmere sweater.

“I’m not wearing that.”

“It’s too big for me. And the cats like it. It’s Christmassy.” 

To prove his point, a ghost cat pops its head out of Felix’s box and sniffs the sweater. It's the little calico who talked to him in the beginning. Adorable and evil, just like his boyfriend. 

“Don’t do this to me,” Sylvain wails. He covers his face with his hands “Who knows how long it’s been in there? What if it has mites?”

“I don’t sense any major living presences on this sweater,” Felix says soberly. “You have nothing to worry about. How about we make a deal?”

Sylvain eyes him warily. “What kind of deal?”

“If you wear it, I’ll let you touch my cat ears. Once,” Felix promises.

Sylvain’s hand twitches at his side. Felix stares at him, eyebrows raised, waiting for him to give in.

A few minutes later, Ingrid walks in on Sylvain stroking Felix’s cat ears. Her face has ‘What the Fuck?’ written all over it. 

Sylvain retracts his hands quickly, a defense ready on his tongue, but Felix destroys it before he can say anything.

“This is exactly what this looks like,” Felix says.

She doesn’t say anything, turns back and closes the door. Sylvain silently promises to venmo $10 to the flirt jar later.

* * *

“So you couldn’t find any Christmas decorations,” says Ingrid.

“No.”

“So you bought down a box of socks instead.”

“I thought they would be a good Christmas stocking substitute,” says Sylvain.

“What are you wearing? And where can I get one?” asks Dimitri. Sylvain’s eye twitches at the mention of his truly unfortunate sweater.

“Let’s just pin these socks onto the fireplace, these things are itchy and I want them off,” says Felix, scratching at his ghost ears.

He picks up the box, and the cats bound after him as if he was the Pied Piper of Hamelin. They go and help him, picking up the red, green and gold bed socks and hiking socks, which looked the least sad out of the bunch.

“This looks almost decent,” says Felix. Ingrid elbows him sharply with a scowl on her face. Felix snorts and amends, “Fine. It looks good.”

“It looks great,” Ingrid insists.

Sylvain has to admit they’re right. The window casts an ethereal glow; the snow falling outside sets the festive mood well. The tree, though relatively small, is very cheery and cute. Sylvain's little flames illuminated the space well, like dozens of little red fairy lights. The cookies they placed on the floor did seem out of place and the socks they taped on the fireplace were a little odd, to say the least, but they did pretty well considering that they were literally trapped in a snowstorm.

Sylvain glances at his friends—they all look satisfied and proud. Even Felix, who has been annoyed with his curse all night, seems _happy._ Sure, it’s not the most perfect Christmas scene, but aren’t the holidays about family and friends? The atmosphere was important.

“It doesn’t look like it’s working,” says Ingrid. 

“What are we missing?” Felix asks, frustrated.

The cats around him stop chasing each other in the air. One of the cats trots up to Ingrid, holding a sprig of mistletoe in its mouth.

“No way,” Sylvain says. “Job-ordained smooching?”

“Well, she was waiting for her love to come home. Maybe...she wishes to see romantic love in the house again,” says Dimitri, oddly insightful. 

Ingrid shakes her head, smiling, and levitates the sprig on top of Felix and Sylvain. “Go on, you don’t even have to pay the flirt jar.”

“May I?” asks Sylvain. 

Felix smiles and leans in, tugging their held hands so that Sylvain stumbles closer. Sylvain reaches out to the back of his neck and kisses him softly and sweetly. Very granny-appropriate, considering their audience. The few of the cats dance around them until they part. 

“Merry Christmas,” says Felix. 

“Merry Christmas, love,” says Sylvain softly.

_Merry Christmas_

Startled, they move to the sound of the happy voice. There, by the staircase, stood the ghostly grandmother. She’s smiling. 

She turns to the side as if taking someone’s hand. She and her invisible companion step forward once and disappear with a shining, comforting light. 

The cats all meow with varying intensity and move towards the space where she had disappeared, moving like a wave of cats. They left one by one in the same manner, creating a brighter and brighter light in that spot until Sylvain had to cover his eyes because of the intensity. 

When he opens his eyes, all of the cats are gone. The tree, the socks, decorations and the gingerbread cookies (sorry Ingrid), had disappeared with the blinding light too.

Felix pats his hair. “Is that it? Are they gone?”

Sylvain kisses the top of his head. “Yes, love, they’re gone.”

“Those were probably the cutest ghosts I’ve ever seen,” says Ingrid. Dimitri nods solemnly.

“Yeah,” says Felix, thoughtfully.

The image of Felix playing with the calico ghost cat in the attic flashes in Sylvain’s mind. “Hey, Felix, you were complaining about not knowing what to get me for Christmas, right? What if we get a cat?”

"That sounds alright," says Felix, but his expression says, 'That sounds perfect'.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Cha, Jen and Evie for holding my hand. And thanks Jen for the amazing art of "The Kiss" (tm)!! RT it [here](https://twitter.com/hekxate/status/1334413005623185409).  
>   
> You can RT the fic [here](https://twitter.com/Feroxai_/status/1334629224221528064).  
>   
> Fun fact: there are 27 cats!! Granny had many cats over the years, who waited until she passed to move on with her... little did they know that things would not go to plan...ehehe


End file.
